From the original Festival website:

The idea for this performance appeared when we received an e-mail message from Canadian performer Paul Couillard:

“It is my pleasure to inform you of a performance I am planning for the beginning of October 2009 in Quebec City:

SILENCE #7: BEAUTIFUL LOSERS, WITH THANKS TO WLADYSLAW KAZMIERCZAK AND EWA RYBSKA

This is the seventh edition in a cycle of 24-hour “silent” actions scheduled to finish in June 2011. Each installment in this series is constructed to sit in dialogue with a work or works of specific performance artists from around the world.

For Beautiful Losers, I will attempt to maintain “silence” (refraining from speaking or utterance) for a period of 24 hours leading up to my appearance in the cabaret. During this time I will undertake small formal actions intended to bring to the surface the texture of this psychologically private space. 

In keeping with the title of the performance, some of the actions will make reference to Leonard Cohen’s famous book, Beautiful Losers while also sitting in dialogue with the ironic, politically charged tableaux of Polish performance artists Wladyslaw Kazmierczak and Ewa Rybska, currently living in England.  Regards, Paul Couillard.”

It hit us very much for a few reasons:

• We observe and attend as well in the process of analysing some aspects of art located inside/outside of the historical descriptions and collections
• We observe lately that title Beautiful Losers is used very often as a title of works or exhibitions
• In Polish language the meaning of Beautiful Losers is close to the meaning: ‘almost saint people’ but not dependent on any religion or ideology

This performance for the NRLA will be a continuation of our work concentrated on the consideration of significant live art aspects. We want to use some short video citations from an art context suggesting that Beautiful Losers are still energetic, interesting and disinterested.

Addendum to the original text, added February 2020.  To make better sense of the actual work the artists performed at the NRLA in 2010 and what you see in the video documentation.

We have had a problem with the misleading description of performance art by historians for over 50 years. Particularly annoying statements say that performance art is directly rooted in Futurism, Dadaism or the neo-avant-garde but the connection is not necessarily correct. What we discovered in the new editions of the original sound art of the Futurists, Dadaists and neo-avant-garde is that their art is very close to the state of mind of performers. It does not matter which period the art is from. It overwhelms us with creativity, openness, courage and a fantastic instinct as to where art should go. Looking at the live pieces of Cage, Duchamp, Schwitters, Klein, Tzara, Kaprow or Boccioni, we feel a closeness and a great energy. We feel that nothing permanent will remain after us; in this sense, as the artists, we are losers but we like it that way.

In the performance we use John Cage’s video as a video-score and a television interview with Marcel Duchamp, who explains exactly why he doesn’t care about the word art, which has been so discredited.

Biography updated 2020:  Rybska & Kazmierczak have produced a number of political performances based on oppression of freedoms worldwide, with performances focussing on difficult and traumatic themes, such as political hypocrisy and issues of oppression in the Catholic State. In performance they use an ironic and nihilistic attitude, especially against the institutions and fake icons/idols of contemporary art.  They feel that to be a performer is an attitude towards the world and oneself, not towards the art. A performer’s struggle is a silent, heroic fight for the freedom of expressing momentous and significant ideas.

Rybska & Kazmierczak started collaborating in 1997. From that time they have created over 150 performances. They have been living in political exile in the UK for more than 13 years. Ewa Rybska was a curator at the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Poland (1996-2006). She specialised in mentoring young Polish artists, helping them in their early artistic careers. Wladyslaw Kazmierczak studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Krakow. He became involved in performance art in 1974 and was recognised as a pioneer performer in Communist Poland. He was curator and organizer of the first national performance art festival in Krakow (1981). In free Poland he became the curator of the international performance art festival Castle of Imagination in Poland, USA and Germany (1993-2006) for 14 editions. He currently administers a Facebook group that encourages artists to share ideas and information on performance art activities.

kazmierczak.artist.pl